# tig

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/tig/

14 people recommended tig in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and none criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 12 months, in 12 threads. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A lightweight, long-maintained terminal interface for browsing git history, viewing diffs and staging hunks; more barebones than Magit.

Summary written by Claude from the comments below.

## Why people recommend it

- Quick selective staging of hunks (4 comments in the sample): "one of my favorite tools to quickly commit stuff without too many key presses" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47171067)) "it’s been my tool of choice for staging hunks for more than 15 years now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45882428)) "how tig TUI makes this, and other git actions, very simple" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263260))
- Clean diff and log views (4 comments in the sample): "I’ve used tig, a git TUI that renders very nice views of the diffs, for many years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49582149)) "mostly for easier git log viewing for me as I use straight git most of the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47613019)) "less cluttered UI and slightly faster interface" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45880985))
- Simple, reliable, long-maintained tool (2 comments in the sample): "Tig is a nice and long-maintained git tui you might enjoy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47088972)) "it's simple and reliable and compiles everywhere I need" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45883923))

## What people warn about

- Barebones compared with magit or lazygit (2 comments in the sample): "tig is more barebones, but I could quickly configure it to be able to do most of the magit tricks I need." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48263197)) "I could probably cobble something close with tig or lazygit if I switched from emacs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770139))

## Other terminal Git clients people recommend

- [lazygit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lazygit/): 78 recommend, 6 mixed, 15 criticize
- [jjui](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jjui/): 19 recommend, 2 mixed, 0 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "tig", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tig/ (14 recommend, 1 mixed, 0 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.